Monthly Archives: July 2008

I know I’m a little late in writing this considering that Quebec City just held a giant celebration on it’s 400th anniversary but it is always too much fun to jump into the province’s (and Canada’s) language identity crisis. In Quebec, we have a bizarre holiday schedule. Whereas most of North America shuts down only once a year between Christmas and New Year’s, in la belle province, we pretty much close from St. Jean Baptiste (Quebec’s national holiday) to Canada Day. On June 24, politicians of all political stripes descend onto the province to show that they care about the province and by June 25th, the Anglophone politicians have already fled the province before the poutine digests for fear of actually having to speak French.

So what does this have to do with porno…or am I just a tease? A gorgeous, blond tease?

Canada has three major English-language television networks (four if you consider City TV a national network despite not being able to receive over-the-air in six out of ten provinces). However, Quebec also has three major French-language stations. Considering that Quebec only has a population of 6.5 million francophones, this does not create an ideal market for three networks. Radio-Canada has been around the longest and TVA is the largest privately-owned network while TQS runs porn late at night.

Guess which one is begging the CRTC to make changes to the content rules to ward off bankruptcy.

Surprisingly, not everyone is a 13-year-old boy since TQS doesn’t really have any viewers or money. New owners Remstar have pleaded with the CRTC to make changes to the rules requiring that stations provide at least 18 hours of local programming. CRTC has allowed for these changes to be made to prevent the network from going under because it’s extremely important for Quebec to have three networks.

TQS called itself the black sheep of television for years. Their edgy brand of television did not result in viewers nor praise due to their lack of mind-stimulating content. Aside from being the place where a teenage boy can see his first nipple, TQS hasn’t contributed much to Quebec’s culture. Why should a government body be making concessions to a flop of a station?

There really is no good reason, really. One could argue that more stations means more access to cultural programming; no matter how little the cultural value these stations provide. If you look at the state of California, which has roughly the same amount of inhabitants as Canada and they have several networks in both English and Spanish, why shouldn’t Canada strive for the same model?

What must be said though is even though much of the programming on TQS (and the other French stations) are taken from American programming that’s dubbed in French, these stations produce more (and generally better) homemade content than their Anglophone counterparts outside of Quebec. Global and CTV are basically networks that formulate the best of what’s available on U.S. television. Maybe in the end TQS will realize that locally made content is what Quebecers want.